There's gold in them thar buckets…right??

Summer is fading; the leaves are turning amber, the fireweed blossoms have fallen, there's a chill in the air. And my little countdown app is displaying a startlingly small number of days before homecoming. It's August 27th, which means that in one month from today I will be stepping off a plane into the noise of Philadelphia. I will have left my summer in Alaska behind.

Honestly, it's a little alarming. I don't really want this time to end. I don't want to say goodbye to the people I've come to know and care about. But, as one who tries to live optimistically, I'm attempting to focus on, ya know, "living in the moment." Basically wringing all the awesomeness I possibly can from this summer. I've been fishing, hiking, kayaking, canoeing, horseback riding. I've roasted s'mores on frosty nights beside the river, watched orcas breech and sea lions dive, paddle-boarded beside calling loons, and lifted my face to brilliant displays of the Northern Lights.

I've also, as a housekeeper, cleaned hundreds upon hundreds of toilets. But I don't know if that is a) unique to Alaska; or b) something to be proud of.

Anyhoo.

Panning for gold is something else I've now officially experienced. Yay! Amber, one of my most favorite people here, is leaving in a few days, so when she suggested we try out some gold panning, I was eager to accept. Of course we brought along Zac. Because he's awesome.

We shoveled some gravel into buckets, then began the process of scooping bits of the gravel onto our sluices. We would each shake the sluices back and forth, filtering out any tiny flakes of gold, which we would then pick out with tweezers (I think poor Zac only found, like, two flakes of gold). It was painstaking work, so naturally we had to take a doughnut break at Dude's Food Truck.

Fresh outta the oven with blueberry frosting. Yesss.

After going through all our gravel with the sluices, we settled down for some real old fashioned gold panning. Ah, this is what I had been looking forward to! Except that it was also hard. Dangit. However, I will point out with no small amount of pride, that I found a TON of (microscopic) gold flakes and three (also microscopic) garnets! Yes, I can definitely see a future career in Alaska gold panning for me.

Lookin' Fly (I think) while Fly Fishing

You haven't experienced Alaska until you've seen the salmon run. Every summer the crystalline rivers flash crimson with the vibrantly-scaled fish struggling upstream, while the riverbanks are crowded with fly fishers, clad in bulky waders and casting their lines in hopes of catching one of the thousands of salmon. Alaskans are very proud of their salmon. (In fact, they're pretty much obsessed.)

Well, I finally convinced my super-fun brother, Zac, to come up and work here in Alaska with me. The week he arrived, our tiny town was hosting its annual SalmonFest, a collaboration of local chefs who each submit a salmon dish of their own creation. You pay $10 to get in and basically have all-you-can-eat salmon.

DOES IT GET ANY BETTER THAN THAT?

Zac doesn't really like salmon (which is why he can never be a true Alaskan) but I eventually convinced him to go to the festival with me. We sat at one of the crowded long tables beneath the lodge ceiling and tried every dish at least once. Even my hater brother had to admit it was delicious. Also, there was coleslaw. Like I said: perfect and very Alaska-y.

My [super-hot and all-around awesome] boyfriend, Blake, just loves fly fishing. He goes fishing nearly every morning and probably enjoys being out there in the river almost as much as he enjoys being with me. Almost.

Determined to figure out what, exactly, is so great about fly fishing, I asked him to take me on one of his trips. Fishing, to me, has always appeared pretty boring. I mean, you stick a worm on a hook, drop it in the water and wait to catch something, right?

Not really. Blake picked me up after work, we geared up and marched down into the river. I'm not a terribly graceful human, so stick me in waders and Houston we've got a problem; I nearly went down several times, stumbling on the slick rocks and awkwardly regaining my balance with the help of Blake.

The water was frigid and the bank was littered with the rotting carcasses of salmon which did not smell as appetizing as the salmon we ate at the SalmonFest––but it was a cool, lazy afternoon with a light breeze and gentle dose of sunlight. Blake was a very patient teacher, and after a lot of practice, I felt that promising tug on my line and was able to land a rainbow trout, my very first Alaskan fly fishing conquest!

And then, feeling completely satisfied, I was over this whole fishing thing.

At one point, I was alone for several minutes, just squatting at the river's edge. A gray jay called in the distance and the wind rustled the leaves. The only other sound was the water sliding around my legs and over the rocks. It was wonderfully peaceful, that moment by myself––surrounded only by the stillness––outside, secluded, free. An Alaskan fisherwoman. Well, sort of.

Salmon and Self-Discovery

I've been in Alaska for over two months now, and I've only just made a very pertinent discovery about myself: I am not a wilderness girl. Nothing about me is wild or rugged. I absolutely hate "roughing it."

Whoops.

It may seem a bit crazy that I decided to drop everything and move to Alaska for five months. However, my assumption was that since I loved nature, Alaska was the place to be…right? I just never understood that there was a difference between "rugged" (ew) and "rustic" (yesss). Despite all this, one of my goals in life is to be an adventurous person (hence the blog about all my "adventures"). Just because I may shriek in horror when one of my nails breaks doesn't mean I won't jump off a bridge or eat a blood cupcake or crawl through a swamp to get that gorgeousss shot of a heron.

Actually, when it comes to nature photography, my aversion to roughing it tends to fade into the back of my mind. And so, when the option arose to take a hike up to some falls to watch the salmon jump, I was thrilled. Reaching the falls, I picked a ledge over the river that wasn't quite wide enough for both me and my camera backpack, pulled out my zoom lens, and settled down with my eye pressed against the viewfinder.

We sat there for an hour. Occasionally, a salmon would break through the frothy spray in a desperate attempt to breach the falls…but mostly, the fish were simply too exhausted to continue upstream. It wasn't exactly the most thrilling shoot of my life––or the most comfortable seat––but I was so pleased with the possibility of one or two good photos that I didn't notice.

I didn't notice the bear, either.

I didn't even glance in its direction until after it had crashed through the bushes and charged into the river. At this point, it took my non-wilderness brain several moments to register that the big brown thing I was seeing was a dangerous animal called a bear.

Upon realizing the danger, however, I did what every nature photographer would do: I started taking pictures. Carefully picking my way backwards along the rocks, I snapped away as the exhausted salmon streaked frantically through the water, trapped between the bear and the falls. Eventually, the bear snagged a salmon in his jaws. AND THEN THERE WAS BLOOD EVERYWHERE!!

At that point, my camera batteries died and I remembered I'm not actually a NatGeo photographer, but a somewhat-clueless farm girl trying to have adventures in the Alaskan wilderness. Oh yeeeah.

Warning: Nature Overload

I'm a Florida girl, so I've had my share of SeaWorld. My first visit to the theme park was on a chilly November afternoon when I was a wee girl of five. I can still remember watching, enthralled, as "Shampoo the Killer Whale" appeared, hurtling through the glistening aquamarine water and bursting upwards in a magnificent arc.

Unfortunately, nobody told me I was sitting in the Splash Zone. And they should have, because I was a wee girl of five who happened to really, really hate getting wet.

Since that day, I've recovered from my traumatic experience enough to go snorkeling with rays, go scalloping in the Atlantic and even kissing a dolphin. However, I have NEVER seen anything like what nature has to offer at the Kenai (pronounced like "keen eye") Fjord here in Alaska.

I'm happy because I am getting pummeled by the cold wind and not splashed by orcas

My coworkers and I were lucky enough to catch a cruise tour of the fjord on a flawless May day. The sky was bright, the air was brisk, and the wind on deck was like someone incessantly pummeling you with a slab of ice. Luckily, I had a neat little spot inside (next to this cute guy named Blake) and a cup of hot chocolate to which I could return when I tired of having my face frozen.

Blake fell asleep so I decided he was boring and took this totally non-creeper photo

I didn't spend too much time inside, though, because I didn't want to miss any of the wildlife. And boy, was there wildlife. The Kenai Fjord offers a total OVERLOAD of wildlife. It's breathtaking. It's nature's SeaWorld. Who wants to sit in the stupid Splash Zone anyway?

To give you an idea, in this one day cruise I saw orcas, humpback whales, doll porpoises, bighorn sheep, sea otters, sea lions, puffins, auks, harbor seals, bald eagles and a disgruntled black bear. The orcas, whales and porpoises all swam right up to the ship, their glistening sides catching the Alaskan sunlight as camera shutters clicked and people gasped in delight.

Don't forget the landscape, either. Alaska has a beautiful exhibition of awe-inspiring, snow-capped mountain ranges, and watching an orca breaching with those jagged peaks in the background is spectacular. We saw several glaciers and were able to rest in the shadow of one, listening to the distant thunder of ice breaking free and crashing into the gelid water. The crewmen even netted a chunk of glacial ice and hauled it aboard for us to touch (spoilers: it was pretty much like every other piece of ice I've encountered). Glaciers feed nearly all the bodies of water here, and the result is that the rivers and lakes are a translucent aquamarine hue, while the ocean is a deep teal.

Basically, it was unlike anything I've ever seen across the globe. EVERYBODY SHOULD GO TO KENAI FJORD IN ALASKA. Kay bye.

(Now I just have to see a moose!!)

Alaskan Wild

Hi, it's me. Remember how I started this whole blog thing because I was moving to Ecuador? Well, there've been a few changes. You may have noticed the new banner at the top of the page, the new buttons down the side. Ecuatoria has undergone a facelift.

Ecuatoria has moved to Alaska.

You may be thinking, "wait, wasn't I just reading about the Amazon Rainforest?" or "did she seriously just move from the equator to the arctic?" or "I like turtles." Whatever you're actually thinking, it's true that you, me, we all are about to undergo some considerable cultural and climatic changes. Here are the facts:

1) I'm living in Alaska until the end of September.

2) I'm working at a resort lodge nestled deeeep in the wilderness.

3) Seriously, we barely get any wifi out here.

Living in Alaska has been an ambition of mine ever since my family moved to Florida over a decade ago. Now, I love Florida, but it has no mountains (unless you count golf courses), and it has weird seasons (hurricane season, lovebug season, summer, and this weird sunshiny-autumn-spring thing that occurs in the winter months). This inspired in me a fascination of all things Alaska. I checked out all the books on Alaska from our library (this was before the invention of the internet), collected pictures and postcards, talked to anyone who had lived there. And I determined I would someday traverse those wild, rugged slopes that dominated the Land of the Midnight Sun.

Or something like that.

So here I am. It's cold in Alaska. And rainy. Fruit is pricy. We're told never to walk alone because we might get mauled by a bear. There's no wifi. Also…there's no wifi.

However, the wildlife is incredible, the mountain ranges are spectacular (they're much bigger than golf courses), the people are super friendly and tight-knit, and I love it here! I love my coworkers and my job. I love that someone cooks my meals for me. I love that I can step out my front door and find myself surrounded by soaring, snow-capped peaks, or listen to the crystalline river, or watch a bald eagle navigate the cloud-swept sky. Everything here is huge, wild and rustic. The air smells of pine. The sun never seems to set. Welcome to summer in Alaska.

the rainforest is very cool (and very hot)

I grew up with a brother adorably obsessed with all things Amazon. When we were young, he got his little hands on a book entitled, "How To Survive the Amazon Rainforest" (dying in the Amazon, it seems, is not all that hard and requires very little skill). Living in the sandy scrub forests of Ocala, Florida, my little bro and I would act out each of the steps to the extent of our ability––constructing shoddy shelters of palmettos, gathering bugs for food, even brushing our teeth with charcoal (apparently, this somehow heightens your chances of survival and all the cool outdoorsmen do it).

"Don't say anything, but there's an alligator right behind the cameraman."

Fast forward eight years and––bam––my little brother and I are no longer pretending. WE ARE STANDING IN THE AMAZON RAINFOREST. All those library movies about the rainforest, all those hours spent buying things on Amazon.com, all those nightmares I had from that book about that guy who gets lost in the rainforest and almost dies but somehow survives after hallucinating, getting parasites, nearly drowning, being half-eaten by termites and chased by a jaguar (it's a great book and everyone should read it), they all have payed off.

Close your eyes. Envision it. Be in the rainforest.

The air wraps around you. It is thick, wet, heavy with the sweet scent of flowers and rotting vegetation. Spots of sunlight dot the ground and the verdant river that slides across the shadowy bank. The plants grow in layers––tall, slender trees the form a canopy; a middle, sparser group; then thick, thick floor vegetation that brushes your legs and rustles softly as you move, like breaths in and out. Each step flings drops of water, each foot sinks a little into the soft, black ground.

Frogs. The voices of thousands of frogs fill the already-heavy air. There is no wind, but monkeys scramble through the tree tops, causing the branches to shudder. The occasional shriek of a macaw or other brightly-plumaged bird rips through the hum of insects and a yellow tree frog springs across your path. You can see his soft, black eyes rest on you, watch you for a moment, then he slinks forward and nestles beneath a leaf larger than a dinner plate*.

And that is the most important thing about the Amazon Rainforest: it is alive. There is so much life, the forest thrums with it, the river overflows with it, the air sings with it.

*Or your big head.